James Gurney

This daily weblog by Dinotopia creator James Gurney is for illustrators, plein-air painters, sketchers, comic artists, animators, art students, and writers. You'll find practical studio tips, insights into the making of the Dinotopia books, and first-hand reports from art schools and museums.

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Sunday, June 21, 2009

When he translated his reference photo into a painting, Andrew Loomis softened the edges and subordinated the unimportant small forms. For example, he simplified the details under the model’s left hand, and eliminated the delicate tracery in the lower half of the dress.

To idealize the figure, he made the head of the model slightly smaller in the painting than it appeared in the reference.

He was also conscious of breaking up the flat tones of the photo.

“One of the main things that identify a photo as a photo,” he wrote in his classic book Creative Illustration, “is the ultra-smoothness of the tones.”

Where the photo presented monotonous values, such as in the pillows behind the model’s shoulders, he activated the surface with painterly variations.

“Note the accents placed here and here of dark against light, to add punch,” Loomis says. “The lights have been forced somewhat to obtain extra brilliancy. The background has been lightened in spots to avoid the monotony of tone in the photo.”-------From Creative Illustration (1947)

16 comments:

You could call this photoshopping-avant-la-lettre.And than his 'good advice' suddenly sounds like cheating.

Alternately, about those too smooth tones, you could go the exact opposite direction. You could even smooth out the background further to create a more graphic or abstract effect.And you could 'enhance' the models features to bring out her character rather than to 'average' her out into a barbie.

In the end, it's not so much about how much you deviate from your source but more about in what direction you decide to deviate.

I love to do my own versions of b&w photos, and I like to hint that it's a photo. "Too-smooth tones" can be a real challenge to duplicate.I think he lost contrast in the couch and pillows and all the tones are a little too close to each other as a result. Great figure, tho, and I like how he made the head smaller.Jim. do you know the media that was used?

No matter how often I pour over the Loomis books, there is always new insights to get depending on what you are working on at the time.As for breaking up the tones, he kind of did the same thing with line by advising artist to see "How straight you can draw the curve!" It's amazing how much more convincing even round forms are when you introduce some angularity to them.

This is helpful for those of us today whose lives are so busy and hectic, we just have to use photos as reference. Although, I do agree with those who already said, why not sometimes exaggerate that this is a drawing of a photo instead of a person (as Chuck Close does).

Speaking of "...averag[ing] her out like a Barbie" Loomis' women were always beautiful and elegant. His version is a significant improvement of the model. He has eliminated all of the awkwardness of the pose. She appears lighter in weight and graceful as she rests on more of a pillowy cloud than a sandbag couch of the day. He was a classicist contributing to, if not originating, the golden era of illustration's ideal. This post reminded me of a contemporary master who manages to make every object in his paintings elegant, Richard Schmid.

Victor, yes, or the Victorian masters Leighton and Godward. My personal feeling is that a technique that is all smooth or all chunky is not the answer, but rather a judicious combination, for the sake of spice and variety. It all depends on what feeling the painting is trying to express; the technique should serve that goal.

Fred Fixler suggested making two prints (in those pre-digital days) when working from photo reference. One was contrasty, massing large shadow areas though losing detail in the lights. The other was a mid-range exposure like Loomis' photo, so you could see changes in value on the light side. The contrasty photo was to remind you not to lose the subject's underlying structure while you diddle with halftones.

Smurfswacker, Thanks for that. You were lucky to get Fixler's teaching. He knew his stuff.

The classic analog-photo-manipulation trick that Rockwell used was to do a light print and a dark print of a given piece of reference. While it's nice to see the information in the highlights and deep shadows, the practice can tend to push an artist into the murky middle tones. I like Fixler's idea of the contrasty print to keep the big structure on track. It would be easy enough to do that now with digital tools, or even with a photocopier.

Hi, Daniel, Sorry this file isn't very big. You might try the link to the online version of the books that Oscar gave: http://www.alexhays.com/loomis/. Otherwise I guess you'd have to find a copy of the book itself.